Tomorrow both could fail to reach the 2010 finals as they take narrow leads into their play-off second leg clashes.

France, champion in 1998, holds a 1-0 lead over the Republic of Ireland while Portugal holds the same advantage over Bosnia Herzegovina, although the French, unlike the Portuguese, have the added advantage of an away goal.

The other two play-offs see Guus Hiddink's Russia take a 2-1 lead to Slovenia while Ukraine has everything to play for when it hosts Euro 2004 champion Greece in Donetsk with the scores tied at 0-0 following Sunday's stalemate in Athens.

The French-Irish clash looks likely to be a high octane affair after the angry exchanges between rival players at the end of the match in Dublin on Sunday provoked by derogatory remarks by Real Madrid midfielder Lassana Diarra.

''They were disrespectful and anti-Irish,'' commented Irish midfielder Keith Andrews. ''Everyone knows what he [Diarra] said but we don't need those to get ourselves motivated for the match.''

The Irish face a mountain of a task to overcome the deficit as they have not beaten a top-ranked side away from home since beating Turkey 3-1 in the Euro 1992 qualifiers which they didn't reach.

However, their veteran Italian coach Giovanni Trapattoni used another statistic to add evidence to his belief that the men in green could turn it around.

''I have reminded my players that we scored in every one of our away matches in the qualifiers save against Montenegro [including world champion Italy] a group that was of a better quality than that of France,'' he said.

''Winning 1-0 may be enough as then it goes to extra-time and then penalties,'' he added. AFP